David Lewis (Creator, The Lone and Level Sands) 'The Apocalypse of Adolescence': Use of the Bildungsroman and Superheroic Tropes in Mark Millar & Peter Gross's Chosen Julia Round (Bournemouth University) From God Nose to God's Bosom, Or How God (and Jack Jackson) Began Underground Comics Clay Kinchen Smith (Santa Fe College) A Hesitant Embrace: Comic Books and Evangelicals Kate Netzler (Independent Scholar) Narrative and Pictorial Dualism in Persepolis and the Emergence of Complexity Kerr Houston, (Maryland Institute College of Art) POSTMODERN RELIGIOSITY Machina Ex Deus: Perennialism in Comics G. John Stott (Arab American University, Jenin) Comics and Religion: Theoretical Connections Darby Orcutt (North Carolina State University) Killing the Graven God: Visual Representations of the Divine in Comics Andrew Tripp (Boston University) Echoes of Eternity: Hindu Reincarnation Motifs in Superhero Comic Books Saurav Mohapatra (Creator, India Authentic) The Christianizing of Animism in Manga and Anime: American Translations of Hayao Miyazaki's NausicaГ¤ of the Valley of the Wind Eriko Ogihara-Schuck (Dortmund University of Technology) RESPONSE & REBELLION On Preacher (Or, the Death of God in Pictures) Mike Grimshaw, University of Canterbury Superman Graveside: Superhero Salvation beyond Jesus A. David Lewis (Boston University), editors NEW INTERPRETATIONS The Devil's Reading: Revenge and Revelation in American Comics Aaron Ricker Parks (McGill University) London (& the Mind) as Sacred-Desecrated Place in Alan Moore's From Hell Emily Taylor Merriman (San Francisco State University) Drawing Contracts: Will Eisner's Legacy Laurence Roth (Susquehanna University) Catholic American Citizenship: Prescriptions for Children from Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact (1946-1963) Anne Blankenship (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Gold Plates, Inked Pages: The Authority of the Graphic Novel G. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword: Looking for God in the Gutter Douglas Rushkoff (Creator, Testament The New School) Introduction Christine Hoff Kraemer (Cherry Hill Seminary) and A. Contributors identify the unique advantages of the comics medium for religious messages analyze how comics communicate such messages place the religious messages contained in comic books in appropriate cultural, social, and historical frameworks and articulate the significance of the innovative theologies being developed in comics. In essays by scholars and comics creators, Graven Images observes the frequency with which religious material-in devout, educational, satirical, or critical contexts-occurs in both independent and mainstream comics. Addressing the increasing fervor with which the public has come to view comics as an art form and Americans' fraught but passionate relationship with religion, Graven Images explores with real insight the roles of religion in comic books and graphic novels. Practitioners of both traditional religions and new religious movements have begun to employ comics as a missionary tool, while humanists and religious progressives use comics' unique fusion of text and image to criticize traditional theologies and to offer alternatives. Comic books have increasingly become a vehicle for serious social commentary and, specifically, for innovative religious thought.

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